Handover Day One

We arrived at Fox's Marina at 9.30am to be met by John our Project Manager from Oyster. He walked us down the jetty to Askari and we stood for a while on the dock checking everything that had changed since our sneak peak on Monday afternoon - both of us wanting to go aboard but also a little anxious about seeing our interior come to life.

Our Askari in the sunshine on day one!

Since we last saw her, every aspect of her had been polished and on this perfect UK spring day in full sunshine she just sparkled on the water. We stepped aboard and the cockpit cushions were in situ and looked amazing as Carolyn oood and arrrghd Will, the Commissioning Manager bounced on deck to great us. Gingerly we came below and wow! I actually don't have the words to describe how this felt, I just walked around the boat speechless and gave Andrew a big hug; I couldn't believe this was our boat.

We had seen most of the woodwork before but not the floor, the doors, the upholstery or way it just all came together. So totally stylish with a hint or two of sparkle.

The headboard and mattress in the aft cabin were a highlight

Then it was down to work as John and Will took us from bow to stern of the interior with a couple of breaks for tea (and biscuits), plus lovely lunch of sole and local scallops at a fabulous local pub.

Andrew thinks he patented this table idea!

Carolyn took 20 pages of notes, one page each of shopping items and things for us to do, and just one page of things we noted for Oyster; most of which were so minor that they could be fixed up by Neil, while we were out at lunch! There are a few things that just need a bit more investigation to satisfy Andrew's hard questions but overall we were delighted. The headlining was pulled down, filters were opened, secret cubby holes were highlighted and maintenance tips were shared. We also got a great cheat sheet from Neil on how to rectify scratches in the avonite and a special tool from Joe at Wroxham that he and Andrew discussed in February, that he had handcrafted. Then there was the special things like the storage for the sink tops, additional safety features and the care that had been taken to calibrate tanks, gauges, and equipment that impressed us so much.

What a wonderful day - tomorrow we go sailing..... yippee!